Game Learning Analytics: Learning Analytics for Serious Games

Video games have become one of the largest entertainment industries, and their power to capture the attention of players worldwide soon prompted the idea of using games to improve education. However, these educational games, commonly referred to as serious games, face different challenges when brought into the classroom, ranging from pragmatic issues (e.g. a high development cost) to deeper educational issues, including a lack of understanding of how the students interact with the games and how the learning process actually occurs. This chapter explores the potential of data-driven approaches to improve the practical applicability of serious games. Existing work done by the entertainment and learning industries helps to build a conceptual model of the tasks required to analyze player interactions in serious games (gaming learning analytics or GLA). The chapter also describes the main ongoing initiatives to create reference GLA infrastructures and their connection to new emerging specifications from the educational technology field. Finally, it explores how this data-driven GLA will help in the development of a new generation of more effective educational games and new business models that will support their expansion. This results in additional ethical implications, which are discussed at the end of the chapter.

Software Components for Serious Game Development

The large upfront investments required for game development pose a severe barrier for the wider uptake of serious games in education and training. Also, there is a lack of well-established methods and tools that support game developers at preserving and enhancing the games’ pedagogical effectiveness. The RAGE project, which is a Horizon 2020 funded research project on serious games, addresses these issues by making available reusable software components that aim to support the pedagogical qualities of serious games. In order to easily deploy and integrate these game components in a multitude of game engines, platforms and programming languages, RAGE has developed and validated a hybrid component-based software architecture that preserves component portability and interoperability. While a first set of software components is being developed, this paper presents selected examples to explain the overall system’s concept and its practical benefits. First, the Emotion Detection component uses the learners’ webcams for capturing their emotional states from facial expressions. Second, the Performance Statistics component is an add-on for learning analytics data processing, which allows instructors to track and inspect learners’ progress without bothering about the required statistics computations. Third, a set of language processing components accommodate the analysis of textual inputs of learners, facilitating comprehension assessment and prediction. Fourth, the Shared Data Storage component provides a technical solution for data storage - e.g. for player data or game world data - across multiple software components. The presented components are exemplary for the anticipated RAGE library, which will include up to forty reusable software components for serious gaming, addressing diverse pedagogical dimensions.

Evaluation of Serious Games: A Holistic Approach

Digital games constitute a major emerging technology that is expected to enter mainstream educational use within a few years. The highly engaging and motivating character of such games bears great potential to support immersive, meaningful, and situated learning experiences. To seize this potential, meaningful quality and impact measurements are indispensible. Although there is a growing body of evidence on the efficacy of games for learning, evaluation is often poorly designed, incomplete, biased, if not entirely absent. Well-designed evaluations demonstrating the educational effect as well as the return on investment of serious games may foster broader adoption by educational institutions and training providers, and support the development of the serious game industry. The European project RAGE introduces a comprehensive and multi-perspective framework for serious game evaluation, which is presented in this paper.

Realizing an Applied Gaming Ecosystem: Towards Supporting Service-based Innovation Knowledge Management and Transfer

The EU-based industry for non-leisure games is an emerging business. As such it is still fragmented and needs to achieve critical mass to compete globally. Nevertheless its growth potential is widely recognized. To become competitive the relevant applied gaming communities and SMEs require support by fostering the generation of innovation potential. The European project Realizing an Applied Gaming Ecosystem (RAGE) is aiming at supporting this challenge. RAGE will help by making available an interoperable set of advanced technology assets, tuned to applied gaming, as well as proven practices of using asset-based applied games in various real-world contexts, and finally a centralized access to a wide range of applied gaming software modules, services and related document, media, and educational resources within an online community portal called the RAGE Ecosystem. It is based on an integrational, user-centered approach of Knowledge Management and Innovation Processes in the shape of a service-based implementation.

D7.1 - Summary Report of Business Models

This report provides a comparative analysis of the existing and emergent Business models currently employed in the Entertainment digital game industry (referred to in this report as the Leisure industry) and the “serious”, or in the context of the RAGE project and this report, the Applied Games industry. In conjunction with the accompanying WP 7.2 report providing a value chain analysis this report will inform the development of a business mode or models for the proposed RAGE ecosystem.

RAGE Architecture for Reusable Serious Gaming Technology Components

For seizing the potential of serious games, the RAGE project - funded by the Horizon-2020 Programme of the European Commission - will make available an interoperable set of advanced technology components (software assets) that support game studios at serious game development. This paper describes the overall software architecture and design conditions that are needed for the easy integration and reuse of such software assets in existing game platforms. Based on the component-based software engineering paradigm the RAGE architecture takes into account the portability of assets to different operating systems, different programming languages and different game engines. It avoids dependencies on external software frameworks and minimizes code that may hinder integration with game engine code. Furthermore it relies on a limited set of standard software patterns and well-established coding practices. The RAGE architecture has been successfully validated by implementing and testing basic software assets in four major programming languages (C#, C++, Java and Typescript/JavaScript, respectively). A demonstrator implementation of asset integration with an existing game engine was created and validated. The presented RAGE architecture paves the way for large scale development and application of cross-engine reusable software assets for enhancing the quality and diversity of serious gaming.